Edward Kerstein

This project started as a way to look for a place to live. Given that all sorts of city data is available online, I thought it may be possible to stitch it all together and give the user a simple way to filter on cities based on weather, cost of living, taxes, and so on.

I started by assembling data on every city in the US. I purchased data from some vendors and had about 34,000 records. For climate, I parsed NOAA's US Climate Normals and attached each city to its nearest weather station.

Where I got stuck was tax data - it became overwhelming to try and add logic that could handle every state's unique laws. I got as far as a tax worksheet that estimated state and local tax from a household profile.

I was able to make a climate map, though. It plotted about 22,000 cities, with sliders for temperature, rain, snow, and the rest.

A second map did the same thing for demographics. You could filter for cities where at least a quarter of residents were over 65, or for places with more six-figure households and less poverty. Each of those pulled a different set of cities onto the map.

I ended up retiring this project for a simple reason - I settled down! I bought a house, family moved nearby, and I became pretty sure I was never going to move again.